eorgie, don't! Indeed I would not, if I were you," exclaims
Clarissa, in an agony. Good gracious! Is she lost to all sense of
shame? "He won't like it. It is surely the man's part to speak first
about that."

"Oh, very well,"--amicably. "But there couldn't be any harm in my
speaking about it."

"Just as much as in any other woman's."

"Not so much as if it was Cissy?"

"Twice as much. What has she got to do with it?"

"Well, a great deal, I take it,"--laughing again.

"As a friend she may feel some interest in him, I suppose. But _she_
is not going to marry him."

"Well, I think she is. You don't think she will refuse him, do
you?"--anxiously.

"Cissy Redmond!"

"Cissy Redmond."

"Do you mean to tell me," says Clarissa, growing very red, "that it
is Cissy you have been talking about all this time, and
not--yourself?"

"Myself! What on earth are you thinking of?" It is now Georgie's turn
to blush crimson, and she does it very generously. Then she breaks
into wild mirth, and, laying her head on Clarissa's knees, laughs till
she nearly cries. "Oh, when I think of all I have said!" she goes on,
the keenest enjoyment in her tone,--"how I praised myself, and how
cavalierly I treated his proposal, and--what was it I said about
asking him to name the wedding-day? Oh, Clarissa, what a dear you
are!--and what a _goose_!"

"Well, certainly, I never was so taken in in my life," confesses Miss
Peyton, and then she laughs too, and presently is as deeply interested
in Cissy's lover as if he had indeed been Georgie's.

CHAPTER XXI.

"Sin and shame are ever tied together
With Gordian knots, of such a strong thread spun,
They cannot without violence be undone."--WEBSTER.

"Sharper than the stings of death!"--REYNOLDS.

Upon Pullingham a great cloud has descended. It has gathered in one
night,--swiftly, secretly,--and has fallen without warning, crushing
many hearts beneath it. Shame, and sin, and sorrow, and that most
terrible of all things--uncertainty--have come together to form it,
while doubt and suspicion lie in its train.

Ruth Annersley is missing! She has disappeared,--utterly!
entirely!--leaving no trace behind her, no word, no line to relieve
the heart of the old man, her father, and which is slowly beginning to
break, as the terrible truth dawns upon him.

Only yester eve she had poured out his tea as usual, had bidden him
good night,--lovingly, indeed, but not as one would bid an et